Stickers and coal on Environment Day: Rudd Government won’t get right answers until it asks the right questions
The Rudd Government is swiftly squandering any credibility it had on climate change, Australian Greens climate change spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, said today.
Senator Milne said, “How extraordinary that, on World Environment Day, with a global focus on climate change, our Environment Minister ducks, weaves and dances as if he were still on stage, while his colleague, the Minister for Coal, spruiks turning his favourite resource into a horrendously polluting transport fuel.
“At heart, the problem is that the Rudd Government is no more willing to challenge itself and ask the right questions than the Howard Government was. If this Government has not even got the courage to introduce strict mandatory labelling and minimum performance standards for all appliances, what hope is there for any rigour in the emissions trading scheme?
“Far from leading the world, the Rudd Government is playing a double game on climate change, trotting out Peter Garrett to re-announce weak election commitments while continuing the business-as-usual support for coal.
“Instead of populism on petrol prices and liquefying coal, Australians need and deserve mandatory vehicle fuel efficiency standards and the kind of multi-billion dollar investment in mass transit and cycleways that the Greens are calling for. That is what will provide real relief from the spiralling cost of transport.
“Instead of voluntary labelling schemes and strictly limited, ad hoc loans, Australians want and deserve a systemic roll-out of energy efficiency measures to every home and business in the country, a set of minimum energy performance standards for all appliances, and laws that require industry to lift its game on efficiency, such as the Greens have been promoting.
“Instead of a polluting pulp mill, Australians want and deserve an end to logging in native forests, saving the vast carbon reserves that they store, as well as protecting their magnificent biodiversity.
“After the Howard Government’s 12 year refusal to request any Treasury climate modelling, it is deeply troubling to find, as I did in Estimates hearings yesterday, that the modelling work now being undertaken for the Rudd Government is restricted to emissions scenarios (450 and 550 ppm of greenhouse gases) which would see a very high chance of triggering runaway climate change.
“The Rudd Government does not even want to know what it should do, refusing to even find out what might happen if it took the kind of action that scientists say is required.”
